WICKED had its highest grossing year to date in 2009, grossing £27,333,991 at the Box Office at London’s Apollo Victoria Theatre. This is up almost £100,000 from 2008. Since its London premiere in September 2006, WICKED has taken in over £90 million at the UK Box Office.
The production celebrated its 1000th performance on February 14, 2009 and welcomed its 2 millionth theatergoer on May 11, 2009.
Michael McCabe, UK Executive Producer, said, “The public’s incredible enthusiasm and support for WICKED has swept us along on a huge wave of success since we opened in 2006. To see our business continuing to climb year-on-year is really incredible and we are enormously grateful to the millions of people who have bought tickets to date and especially to those who made 2009 our best year yet.”
Based on a novel by Gregory Maguire, WICKED has music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by Winnie Holzman.
The director is Joe Mantello, scenic design by Eugene Lee, costumes by Susan Hilferty, lighting by Kenneth Posner, sound by Tony Meola, orchestrations by William David Brohn, musical staging by Wayne Cilento.
The setting is in the Land of Oz, where two girls meet – one born with emerald green skin. This one is smart, feisty and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious and very, very popular. WICKED is the story of these two unlikely friends and how they end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch.

Michael Bruce, a new musical composer to the theatre community will have the once in a lifetime opportunity to see his work displayed in full West End glory in a one off performance on Nov.1st at the Apollo theatre.

The production will be his own creation, Michael Bruce: A Little Less Ordinary and will include the talent of theatre stars such as Oliver?s Sara Lark, Avenue Q?s Julie Atherton and Daniel Boys, contestant How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?s Helena Blackman, Wicked?s Alex Jessop, Paul Spicer, and Helena Blackman. Each of the stars will perform in a melody of Bruce?s own compositions which is an amazing amount of exposure for a new artist just starting to break onto the musical theatre scene,

The show will be produced by the same people that worked with the Notes From New York series on television in which Bruce was discovered in the 2007 competition. Since then, Bruce, who is a former Scottish dancer and currently aged 25, has been nudged along by the producers who have helped him carve a name for himself in the industry.

Bruce additionally will premier his new production, Ed, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year.

Neil Eckesley, one of the producers from Notes, stated that it?s rare to find a youth who contains the same flare and vision as Bruce does for musical theatre as a composer. He continued that throughout the show they were impressed with the amount of talent he has and that he has always been easy to work with and they are doing everything possible to make sure his talent is heard.

The current environment of musical theatre is very hard to break into, especially for youths, thus the showcase is aimed at providing hope to future youth composers and recognition of talent for one of the West End?s rising stars.

The Apollo Victoria Theatre is currently home to Wicked, a tale of two witches that is the only musical to break the box office records set by Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis.

About two million London theatre buffs have now seen the show which started its run back in 2003 with an opening in New York. Since then Wicked has been performing, well rather wickedly, at the book office turning over a million dollar profit a week, been on two national tours, and won three Tony awards.

Wicked is the birth child of Gregory Maguire who was an American writer with a list of unsuccessful children?s novels under his belt who lived in London. After he turned 39 he decided to write something with a little less boyish nature and more mature to cement his name in literature.

Browsing the news he saw the coverage of the Jamie Bulger murder and the rise of Saddam Hussein. In these stories he found inspiration as he contemplated what happens if you wrongly label someone ?bad? without taking the time to consider your statements or thoughts.

Hence, Wicked, was born complete with his favourite villain from the Wizard of Oz, the wicked witch of the west. The novel became a crafted gem that focused around two witches, the east and the west that were sisters, and explains how the wicked witch of the east gained her title and her precarious looks. It also contains of course a moral compass in the form of Glinda the good witch who is a bit more naturally blessed when it comes to appearance as is Glinda from Oz.

The novel was originally sold in the US in 1995 and has sold over two million copies since then astounding Maguire who attributes its success to the conscious overtones of the Wizard of Oz.

Universal executives attempted to recreate the novel into a movie, but could not seem to get the formula correct until a Broadway composer, Stephen Schwartz, suggested they turn it into a musical and thus, Wicked the blockbuster musical was born.